Correlation Does Not Equal Causation.

I’m thinking about something specific, but I then realized my point was about something a bit more general. Whenever groups of people are arguing about morality and law, there seems to be this huge assumption that human law should coincide with whatever is “right” and “wrong”. As if proving something to be wrong should be reason enough to outlaw it.

Why should this be the case? Most laws have absolutely nothing to do with morality. Instead, they’re about dictating a social order. Not order in a moral sense, just in a getting-along sense. I think of all those silly traffic rules. There’s nothing morally wrong about making a left on red. It’s just a courtesy thing.

(On a side note, if morality dictated law, how come betraying a friend isn’t illegal? : D)

But yes, we have the obligatory don’t kill people, don’t be a bitch to people – don’t do bad shit to other people. But these hard laws are few and far between. At least to me. I don’t know law, after all.

Wanting to dictate social order is the reason prohibition was passed. Alcohol was see as the cause of problems. Snobs wanted society to look politically correct – sober and free from the ills of alcohol. Things very similar to this are still in effect today.

Yes, social order. Wanting to dictate how society looks. This is the reason people believe religion is a good reason to legislate law. Religion is a form of culture, and people want their culture to rise to the top. ..Wait, I’m a little off-kilter.

Once you take a perspective of moral relatively or even moral irrelevance, the world takes on an entirely different look. There’s no right or wrong, just people wanting desperately to be right. Wanting to know they’re doing the right thing. Capital punishment? Abortion? Drugs? Assisted suicide? Iraq? The world will keep on going, regardless of my opinion. There are circumstances, there’s a time and place for everything. A sea of gray, but the media and goverment would have you believe there is only black and white. Democrat or Republican. Third-parties still aren’t taken seriously, are they? Us or them. Liberators or freedom-fighters. The Evil Empire or the Birthplace of Democracy. (All apologies to Rome.)

If you look at anything by itself, things seem simple. But seem in a larger scale, there’s a whole spectrum of variables. Maybe in another time, another place, invading Iraq might have made sense to me. Just maybe. But it doesn’t. Not to me, at least. In a time when our own government spouts rhetoric of freedom and liberty, the last thing we need is them legislating our lives. Let them not control out thoughts, our movements, our privacy, our reproductive organs, our ability to realize how we got to this point in the first place. This is, after all, a country founded in terrorism. But, that’s how history goes, I suppose. The little store grows up to be WalMart, WalMart is defeated, so everybody goes elsewhere. A new WalMart is born. And the cycle repeats. (Yes, that is a South Park reference.)

It’s a little emotional game. As Cliff said a while ago to me, people make judgements first, then try to back up those judgements with so-called logic. I’ll be the first to admit I was laughing at Bush way before the 2000 election began. I thought it was a joke. And I saw it happen before my own eyes. All I heard from him was “I will win!”. And this arrogance somehow qualified him as a candidate. And the same smug attitude wins him a second term. He claims a mandate when he barely got over 50%. But, that’s what people want to hear. Winner is me! he practically proclaims, to my ears. As much a puppet as Reagan, but with much less intelligence, the victors will write history, as always.

And that’s why I agree with the New Jersey law that makes talking on your cell phone while driving illegal. Because it has nothing to do with right or wrong. It has to do with how I just don’t like people who do that. HA HA, SUCKERS.